Hey Entrepreneur, Are You Thinking Big Enough?

When it comes to setting goals and building your business, thinking small can suffocate you.

“Why not $10 million?”

He circled around on his office chair, kicked his feet up on his desk, and crossed his hands behind his head.

I had just finished rattling off my business goals for the upcoming year. For a naive college kid, I thought my goal of surpassing the million dollar mark was ambitious enough without being unrealistic.

But my dad thought differently.

“Why wouldn’t you want to shoot for $10 million?” he asked. “I mean, these are internal goals, right? So if you’re already shooting for $1 million, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t push yourself to do ten.”

If you knew my dad, then you might be surprised that he said this. He’s a very humble, hard working lawyer who built his own practice from scratch. He wears 80s clothes to work. Not 80s style, but clothes that he actually bought in the 80s. He’s the type of cranky dude who rolls his eyes at arrogant lawyers, especially the ones who flash off their apparent wealth.

When my dad pushed me to shoot for 10 times my goal, it took me off guard.

But then I realized what he was doing.

He wasn’t talking about money, necessarily.

Sure, he was talking a little bit about money. But he was really talking about every other goal I had listed out to him.

He was telling me to multiply each goal I had by a factor of ten.

In his own way, he was telling me that I was thinking too small.

What do you need to multiply by ten?

Is it your top line? Bottom line? Of course.

But what if it’s your network? What if it’s the amount of time you spend with your family?

Or what about the amount of time you spend working on yourself?

Sometimes we don’t know that we’re thinking too small until someone makes you think about it.